Our teachers and what we have learnt from them

Abstract

In this contribution to the Widening Participation Special Issue of Psychology Teaching Review we consider our experiences in education as people who can’t spell using an auto-ethnographic methodology (Sparkes, 2007), specifically, evocative auto-ethnography (Anderson, 2006) and guided by a social constructionist approach to identity (Burr, 1995). We consider how we have become the people we are through the ways others have responded to the Dyslexic or Dyslexic type aspects of ourselves. We start with Paul ruminating about life in education as a terrible speller1. We then move on to explore Stella’s experiences as a Dyslexic student and on into the early days of her academic career. We finish conversationally by questioning each other about the significance of our experiences and their implications both for education and the social construction of identity. The overall aim of this article is to ask teachers who are intolerant of poor spellers to take a more supportive approach, mindful of the impact they can have. We also seek to support University students who suffer at the hands of their teachers and important others on account of their Dyslexic type symptoms. The students will know who they are as they will have been labelled so many times but we do worry that the teachers may not be able to identify themselves, such are the power relations inherent in the social construction of identity (Phoenix, 2007).